William Bloxham - Hook Norton€¦ · William Bloxham A man of stirling worth William Bloxham was born in 1885 in Hook Norton, but sought his fortune in Australia. Perhaps

H o o k N o r t o n L o c a l H i s t o r y G r o u p

1 www.hook-norton.org.uk/history

William Bloxham

A man of stirling worth

William Bloxham was born in

1885 in Hook Norton, but sought

his fortune in Australia. Perhaps

it was his sense of adventure that

brought him back to Europe to

fight in the war to end all wars: it

is more likely it was a sense of

duty to his homeland and its

values.

Will's family had come to Hook Norton from Tadmarton in 1880 and on the

1881 census they are farming 130 acres at Horwood Farm. Later they farmed at

Grounds Farm.

The Bloxham Family in about 1901

Back row: William, Joseph, John, Bessie, Leonard, George Front row: Leonard, James, May, Charles, Elizabeth née Adkins



At the age of 14 Will was apprenticed to John Spatcher who had a general

store in the High Street. After his five year apprenticeship was completed in 1904,

Will got a job as a book keeper at the Brewery. His older brother John had worked

there, but by 1904 he had moved to Wales.

Will was involved in various village societies. He sang in the Choir and the

Choral group: this photograph shows three members of the Bloxham family in the

second row.

From the left: James Bloxham, Will, Reverend Freeman, George Bloxham

He was also a bellringer… and clearly had a great sense of fun as these

photographs show:



But Will had a serious side: he was a member of the Primrose League which,

as the certificate says, aimed to maintain religion, the constitution and the honour of

the British Empire.

Will decided to emigrate to Australia accompanied by his friend Walter Newth

who was engaged to be married to Will's sister Bessie. It's not clear what prompted

Will to seek his luck abroad. What is known is that the Brewery was going through a

difficult time. There was talk of redundancy and perhaps Will was worried about his

job. The two young men booked their passage to Australia for July 1912. Will would

be missed in Hooky, not just by his family. Walter would never return.



Before they left Will received a letter from Miss Margaret Dickins1 (shown here

with the choir in 1912: she is in the front row, holding a baton) inviting him to the

school at 8 o'clock on Saturday evening "when we hope to have the pleasure of

presenting you with a slight expression of our great regard for you". The gift was a

Gladstone bag.

Will also received glowing testimonials from leading members of the village

community.

We have always found him steady, industrious and trustworthy and well capable

of occupying any post of trust and responsibility for which he may wish to apply.

Alban A. Clarke

(Managing Director of the Hook Norton Brewery Co Ltd)

I feel that I can mostly conscientiously & confidently speak of him as a man of

stirling worth, & of entire trustworthiness & reliability. He will be found temperate,

industrious, straitforward & loyal. I very much regret that he contemplates

leaving the village, for he has been a good influence here & will be wherever he

goes.

Ernest C Freeman

(Rector of Hook Norton)

1 Miss Dickins, the church organist, became the village historian



I have great pleasure in saying that I have known Mr. Wm. Bloxham from infancy.

I have the greatest possible esteem & respect for him, he is a most temperature,

industrious & altogether trustworthy young man…

His disposition & character have fitted him for any position of trust & although I

have given many references to other young men, I will here add what I have

never written in any other, that I feel it a pity that England should loose [sic] a

young man of Mr Wm. Bloxham's worth and general good character.

James Wm. Harris

(County Councillor for Oxfordshire

Member of Banbury Rural District Council

Chairman, Hook Norton Parish Council)

The Journey

And so on 19 July 1912 Will and Walter began the six week journey to Sydney

aboard RMS Orantes. For a young man from a small inland village a journey to the

other side of the world was a great adventure. Will, as was his wont, made the most

of it. He joined in all the activities and collected keepsakes of the voyage.



There were concerts and memorable excursions ashore at Gibraltar and

Naples (with the possibility of a trip to Pompeii), exhausting heat on the Suez Canal,

a few hours for a rickshaw ride in Columbo. Sports for prizes were a great success

and on 20 August Will and Walter reached their first Australian port, Freemantle,

where a large number of "our jolly company" left.

Will and Walter parted in Sydney: Walter sailed on to New Zealand where he

had the promise of employment on a farm.

New South Wales

Will stayed in New South Wales, travelling 375 miles north to Bingara, a boom town

where gold, copper and diamonds had been discovered. Whether he expected to

make his fortune by mining or not, he settled for a more reliable job: he became a

book keeper in a general store in Upper Horton, south of Bingara.

There Will was befriended by John Brodbeck who had a garage. John took

Will home to Millie Creek, Barraba, to meet his family… and the second oldest sister,

Louie.



By the summer of 1914 Will and Louie had become engaged to be married

and when the news reached Grounds Farm the family were delighted. Will's mother

wrote to Louie, "I am so glad you are happy together, and I pray as time goes on that

you may be a blessing to each other".

But that summer war was declared.

For the Honour of the Empire

Poster, Alfred Leete.

First published in London Opinion,

5.9.1914, this image was to spawn a

number of recruiting posters



It seems that Will had promised Louie that he would not go to war. It was a promise

he would be unable to keep. His brothers John, James and Charles had all enlisted.

His friend Walter Newth had been killed at Gallipoli on 27 August 1915. (Walter had

hoped for a re-union with Bessie at Grounds Farm, but his batallion was diverted to

Egypt instead of England: so Bessie and Walter were never to meet again.) Late in

1915 Will wrote to Louie:

Doubtless this letter will give you much pain, my darling. I want you to let me off

the promise I made to you some time ago about going to enlist. I promised I

would not go. Darling, I really think it's my duty to go. They are wanting men

badly and if the men at home don't respond readily enough I fear conscription

will be enforced.

Will was right: Britain brought in conscription for those aged 18 to 42 in June

1916. He would have been conscripted if he had stayed at home in Hook Norton.

Australia, though, did not introduce conscription during the first World War.



Will enlisted on 9 December 1915. His record tells us that he was 30 years

old, 5'8" tall, single, and that his mother was his next of kin. He became 4595

Private W.T. Bloxham of the 18th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force.

In his last will and testament made on 5 January 1916 at Millie Creek Will left

all his personal possessions to his fiancée Louie Brodbeck. Five days later Will was

at the Recruit Training Camp at Casula near Sydney. His letter – "To my own darling

Louie" – tells her that he has been trench digging. He goes on to complain about the

fleas and other insects at the camp… and hopes the rain won't last "for it makes

things unpleasant". He could not have known it was a foretaste of the misery of life

in the trenches.

A sea of mud

In April 1916 Will was sent to England, to the Rolleston Training Camp at Salisbury.



At least he got the chance to go home to Grounds Farm before he joined his

comrades on mainland Europe on 30 September 1916. His letters to Louie show a

certain amount of enthusiasm for war: "We are not feeling a bit downhearted but

getting ready, engaged cheerfully to do our bit, only waiting for the word now".

But with more experience of the reality of war he later wrote:

I shall not write of war, but will give you the news when I return…. It is too

horrible to write in letters, but I am pleased to say that I've had a bath and shave

and clean underclothes – this after a week's dirt and hair on the face cleaning

my teeth was a blessing.

The conditions for Will and the rest of the Allied soldiers were atrocious; the

weather was terrible and the battlefields became an insanitary sea of mud.

Will was listed as sick and confined to hospital in November 1916 and he

didn't rejoin his unit on the front line again until March 1917. Until then he was

engaged in administration behind the lines at Camiers and Etaples: Etaples was the

bridgehead used for supplies and for men going to the front line.

He was stationed in and around Passchendaele in the 3rd Battle of Ypres. The

human cost of these battles was staggering. Between 1914 and 1917 the Allies

suffered 430,000 casualties; 90,000 men were reported missing and 42,000 bodies

have never been recovered.

One soldier is recorded as saying:

It's a sea of mud, literally a sea, you can drown in it. It was the thought of being

drowned in that awful stuff. It's a horrible thought. Anyone would rather be shot and

know nothing about it. The stench was horrible for the corpses were not corpses in

the normal sense. The whole place was just a mess of filth, slime and bones.

Lt J.W. Naylor, Royal Artillery2

2 From They Called it Passchendaele: The Story of the Battle of Ypres and of the Men Who Fought in

it , Lyn MacDonald, Penguin, (1993)



In September 1917 Will got leave and returned to England. He managed a

visit to his family in Hooky and in a letter to Louie he writes: "Jove, I had a great time,

it was not half long enough".

Will with his friend Dave Evans, whom he had

taken home to meet his family.

This dark and desolate time

During the eight weeks that the Australians had been fighting around Ypres they had

suffered 38,000 casualties. But by early October the Allied commanders began to

believe that a breakthrough was possible so further attacks were planned at

Poelcappelle and Passchendaele. 9 October 1917 was "cold, with a coldness

cutting men with the sharp sword of the wind, and there was no glimmer of light ".

Then Will's mother received a telegram informing her that her son was

missing in action; a month later came a letter from his chaplain.



I do not know if you have had any

official news from the War Office about

your son Pte Bloxham?

I write to tell you what I can about

your son. He took part in the offensive

of the 9th October and when last seen

he was moving forward in the attack

and no one saw him fall. However the

supposition is that he was hit by a

sniper. There is a possibility that he is

wounded and a prisoner of war.

Will's mother sent a copy of the

letter to Louie, but Louie had

already read the list of names of

those missing in action in her

local paper.



Will's body was found in February 1918. He was only identified by his disc.

His mother was officially informed that he had been killed in action on 8 October.

She later received a letter from the Red Cross, giving an eye witness account of the

last time her son had been seen alive.



Remembered with Honour

Will's grave simply gives his name, rank and number, with the inscription: Found

Faithful. Deeply Beloved by his Father, Mother, Sisters and Brothers.

His name is on the Memorial in Barraba, New South Wales, as well as in our

church, together with the names of 32 other young men from Hook Norton who had

given their lives.



Will's brothers John and Charles both returned safely. Charles later

emigrated to Canada to begin a new life, but James died in 1922 from trench fever.

Charles James

After Will's death Louie and Mrs Bloxham corresponded for some time. The

last letter is dated 1919; it is long and rambling and Mrs Bloxham begins by saying:

"I know I ought to have written before but really have felt too heartsick, as for a long

time the memory of my dear lad's loss is so hard to get over…. You will be pleased

to hear my other three boys came safely through. Jim came home just after the

Armistice was signed. The other two do not expect to be released for some time".

After sending kind love and every good wish she writes: "I must not say that I

shall be pleased to hear from you again". This sounds ambiguous but perhaps she

was giving Louie permission to get on with her own life. Louie did just that. She

married in the 1920s and had two daughters, Shirley and Betty. But she kept Will's

letters and photographs, and when she died in 1982, her family found them.



The grandson Will never had, Martyn

Killian, was fascinated by Will's story and got

in touch with our Museum. We are indebted

to him for the material he shared with us

which became first a talk for the Local History

Group and for Carry on Learning, and now for

this article commemorating Will Bloxham.

Martyn, standing by Will's grave, in

the 1990s

© Pat and Barbara Summerell and Barbara Hicks

Copyright for the photographs rests with the family.

Further reading

Most of the material for this article came from the box of photographs, souvenirs and

letters kept by Louie Brodbeck.

Lyn MacDonald,They Called it Passchendaele: The Story of the Battle of Ypres and

of the Men Who Fought in it , Penguin, (1993)

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William Bloxham - Hook Norton€¦ · William Bloxham A man of stirling worth William Bloxham was born in 1885 in Hook Norton, but sought his fortune in Australia. Perhaps